I'm not a scientist and to go into too much detail about crystals and crystallization becomes tedious and unnecessary so I will speak in broad general terms.
Lately I've been trying to better understand spectroscopic signatures of crystallized water ice, the process of it becoming amorphous and the effect ammonia plays so as to better understand these features and their related time frames taking place on the satellites of Pluto. After writing this page I realized, everything is a function of temperature and temperature is a function of pressure. |
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Matter is shaped by pressure and temperature. Depending on the temperature and pressure, matter can exist in any of three states solid, liquid or gas.
It's not intuitive to think of an object like a diamond as frozen carbon which has been heated, pressurized then frozen into a crystal but like all crystals, diamonds are the frozen version of tempered compressed molecules. |
Heat diamonds enough and they will liquefy, once that takes place they will no longer be diamond as they would no longer maintain a crystalline structure rather their molecules would be in an amorphous noncrystalized or undefined pattern.
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Change those temperatures and pressures enough and the structural bonds change forming something like a 3 bonded structure called graphite or an amorphous non structure called liquid carbon or take a blow torch to a diamond and you produce a carbon gas bonded with two oxygen's (carbon dioxide CO2). Cool CO2 with light pressure and it becomes another frozen form of crystallized ice called dry ice. Without enough pressure dry ice converts directly from a solid to gas without being able to amorphize into a liquid. Diamonds can't exist as a gas or a liquid any more than crystallized H2O ice can be considered ice when it melts to its amorphous state called water or its gaseous state called vapor. |
When H2O is amorphous or without form we usually refer to it as water and pure H2O water does not conduct electricity. Minerals dissolve into water which then allow electrical current to flow. Various amounts and types of minerals produce more or less electron movement or conductivity in H2O.
Ice 1h has a hexagonal (hence the h) structure and is the ice we are all familiar with. It is noted in Wiki that the next form of ice is 1c which school text books claim has a cubic structure and is formed at colder temperatures (not pressures) than 1h. This is where things start to get tricky. The 1c form of ice may not actually be cubic |
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Not only is the cubic structure of 1c ice questionable but when observing crystalline ice on distant moons via spectroscopy the process of interpreting the data is not simple and straightforward.
Again depending on temperature and pressure, the signature of ice blended with other substances like ammonia or methane can shift the amplitude and frequency of the absorption lines leaving some room for misinterpretation. I'm not smart enough to actually challenge the scientists spectroscopic interpretations and findings but I know there is room for error in the conclusions drawn. |
While liquids seem to be formless masses that flow without structure, this illustration shows some of the complex patterning present inside liquid water. In particular, it reveals how water molecules are arranged in the liquid around a central reference molecule. The H2O molecule is shown with a large central oxygen atom in red flanked by a pair of smaller white hydrogen atoms. The white areas show the highly directional organization of water density in the first and second structural ‘shells’ arising from the hydrogen bonds, while the orange areas show the depletion regions where no water molecules can reside. created via detailed modelling of the behavior of liquid water |
Two concepts that I found difficult to wrap my mind around was convection versus conduction.
To mentally visualize the difference between conducting and convecting processes, imagine this. Convecting - NASA has used the lava lamp example to describe their concept of the polygonal cell's creation process taking place at Sputnik Planitia. Convection is blobs of warmer viscous amorphous material rising up through cooler viscous amorphous material, cooling then falling down as complete intact blobs. The convection concept is one of large icy blobs containing heat, transferring from inside Pluto rising outward toward a cooler surface. |
Here are some notes by James Keane on Matthew Walker on how convecting ice cyclically appears and disappears in Europa similar to what this paper suggests presented from a summary of talks at the Interiors session July 24th, 2013, during the Pluto Science Conference in Laurel, MD. Francis Nimmo (UC Santa Cruz)
Suggestions of surface observational evidence to probe the “Interiors of Pluto and Charon.” What leads to Oceans? A conductive (no convection) ice shell is required to make an ocean (Desch et al 2009). This shell basically lets the heat out from the core. This heating then melts the bottom of the ice shell creating an ocean. The presence of an ocean changes the stress history. In the creation of an ocean, you are replacing low-density ice with higher density water and this introduces compression stresses. In 2013 (2 years before we got to Pluto) Nimmo suggested NASA scientists should look for compression stresses on Pluto during New Horizons' flyby as this would indicate a subsurface ocean. Instead scientists primarily found expansion fractures. They were committed to a subsurface ocean concept so they needed a way to claim expansion fractures explain a subsurface ocean while ignoring Nimmo's conclusion that subsurface oceans create compression features. |
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Quote from a Nimmo paper
For the icy satellites, there are three main sources of heat: accretion, radioactive decay, and tidal heating. Even for Ganymede-size satellites, the gravitational energy released during accretion is rather modest, so that initial differentiation is not guaranteed [Barr and Canup, 2008]. Ganymede's radius of 2,634 km is more than twice Pluto's 1,188 km so heating from radioactive Pluto sized bodies is extremely modest, hence not leading to differentiation during accretion, especially in light of their proximity to the Sun and the low initial temperature for Pluto (35-40 K) compared to Ganymede (126 K). Additionally, during their formative years, the Sun was 30% cooler. |
The below image's are the same as the image on the left but viewed from the north facing toward the south. You can see two to five crumpled ridge lines also known as fold mountains (AKA signs of compression) as mentioned on page 29.
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The above left image is the smoothed spectral signature of methane on Pluto while the right image is a signature of frozen water with ammonia compared to a smooth model line.
In the graph to the right you can see how close but certainly not perfectly matched the signature of laboratory mixed methane is to Pluto and object 2005 FY9. Methane's (CH4) most notable signature dip occurs at 2.3 microns. While there is room for error and in the past reading and understanding these signatures was difficult, today scientists have a much better handle on interpreting these spectral lines of absorption but many of the papers I've read were written during this time of transitional knowledge consequently some make interpretive conclusions with potential errors. |
Below image is from this paper >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
showing various locations on Pluto with varying lines of absorption (reflected light) signatures. I've added the colored text and vertical lines. |
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This presents a point of confusion for me as medium to small objects like Charon are too small to retain volatile gasses as an atmosphere where tholins are often suggested to form. Pluto and Jupiter moon Titan tholin's are theoretically created in their atmospheres then it falls onto the surface.
Bodies like Quaoar (675 km), Sedna (500 km), 1994-JR1 (250 km), MU69 aka Ultima Thule (18-41 km) and the zit on Nix are red with tholins but they are too small to keep an atmosphere of gasses. I explain Nix's zit as the result of a chunk that was knocked off Pluto or ejected by triple point explosive pressures if Nix's impactor didn't come from Pluto then how could something that small become covered in red tholin? All these objects are small red bodies too small to retain volatile's from which tholin is hypothesized to develop from atmospheric gasses and/or surface ices and sunlight radiation. Tholin's are a large variety of complex hydrocarbons that often form a brown orange or red gunk created from irradiation by solar wind, UV photons, and cosmic rays of volatile gasses like methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia (NH3). |
If small bodies can't hold onto these gasses, how are they getting covered in red tholin?
In the case of Nix which is a really small object approximately 40 to 50 km (25 - 30 mi) we see a smaller red scar from an impacting body that left behind a deposit of tholin (what I call a zit). This impactor may have been between 1-5 km leaving behind a 15 kilometer red tholin impact scar. An impacting object this small (1-5 km) can't possibly hold onto volatile gasses. |
Neptune resonant objects aka scattered disk objects (SDO) tend to be brighter and denser than non resonant objects. This implies these objects are twisted and torqued enough by Neptune to become somewhat altered by that process. I have a possible scenario to explain tholin on non atmospheric small objects which are far from the Sun with cold temperatures and pressures. This scenario comes from my observations of Saturn's moon Hyperion. Hyperion's radius is 135 km compared to Enceladus (another Saturn moon) which itself is a mere 252 km. Hyperion's 0.544 g/cm3 density is about half that of water and because of the vacuum of space is much less dense than ice 1h on Earth which is 0.917. Hyperion is about half the size of Enceladus which itself has a density 1.609 g/cm3. |
Hyperion's density has been described as being similar to cotton candy.
Its probably a little denser than that but objects like Hyperion and comet 67P (density = 0.533) are very porous and comet 67P gets more porous towards its core, 67P's interior is also constructed of a water ice lattice. When you shovel heavy wet snow, it feels heavy because it fell while temperatures were close to melting point making the snow mostly water which is dense compared to colder fluffy snow. If its really cold when it snows, the snow is very puffy, powdery, light and airy. Snow balls are very difficult to make with this kind of fluffy snow. Really cold snow isn't sticky |
Comet 67P is comparable in size (little smaller) to Styx (smallest Pluto moon) and is believed to have come from the Kuiper Belt. If Kerberos were formed by accretion then it would be porous like comet 67P. If on the other hand Kerberos is a piece of crustal ice kicked off Charon or Pluto then it would be more dense than comet 67P. Unfortunately we simply don't know the density of Kerberos so there's no way to know if Pluto's moons are more like the surface of Pluto/Charon or more like comet 67P. If we knew the density of Pluto's small satellites we could make an educated guess as to whether or not they formed in place (in-situ) or instead are chunks knocked off Pluto's surface. |
dynamical_evidence_for_a_late_formation_of_saturns_moons_Ćuk_2016_apj_820_97.pdf | |
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But there's more to outer moon Hyperion than what initially meets the eye. Hyperion is not large or massive enough to have pulled itself into hydrostatic equilibrium (round).
A body needs to have a radius of at least 200 km to have a chance of being round (depending on composition), Hyperion is 135 km. Hyperion looks like a sponge and at first glance it would be easy to assume all these craters are formed by impacts. |
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Here's the scale of Hyperion's orbit compared to Enceladus. |
This is Hyperion in true color. Its not really gray or red its sorta a mix between gray and brown. Hyperion's redness is V-R 0.41 making it more gray than red. Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) orbit the Sun between 40-50 AU (Earth distance to Sun = 1 Astronomical Unit or 1 AU) and classical KBO are red, conversely moons like Hyperion are only about 9.5 AU and most lean towards gray or neutral. Ice is considered neutral in color. If small bodies similar to Hyperion find themselves forming in the Kuiper Belt region they may be exposed to just the right amount of sunlight (temperature + radiation) to warm more dense dark colored materials on the surface creating slowly forming cratered pits. As craters are created they slowly expose subsurface layers of trapped volatile gasses like CH4, CO and NH3. |
The moons of the giant planets are neutral or gray while the cold KBO are red but the Neptune hot scattered disk objects are a mix of the two.
When Neptune migrated outward it perturbed gray objects out to the 30 to 50 AU zone but in mostly resonant patterns and inclined orbits, it also disturbed the inner portion of the red cold classical Kuiper Belt disk. This created a scattered disk of mixed gray objects that at one time resided between 15 to 25 AU but are now scattered into inclined eccentric orbits along with some cold red classical KBO. This further strengthens my (page 66) Triton/Pluto/Charon eccentric dance scenario, Charon is a gray object scattered by Neptune just as Pluto was once a cold classical KBO. Triton and Pluto look similar with a red/brown color but are considered gray in the color chart as their surfaces have been turned over by tidal energy. However, their abundance of red tholin has mottled their surfaces with an irregular brown hew. |
In a lab under controlled conditions tholins can be created in a matter of hours so we aren't necessarily looking at millions or billions of years for these processes to take place but at 30 to 50 AU from the Sun the tholin producing time scales would be significantly extended from lab tests.
One or two billion years ago the Sun's output energy was lower than it is today by 10% to 20% and that may have been the perfect condition for objects in the Kuiper Belt to slowly sublimate away ices exposing their more volatile subsurface gasses in turn forming tholins. Back to spectroscopy. |
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the_compositions_of_kuiper_belt_objects_dec_2011mike_brown_---_1112.2764.pdf | |
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Charon's temperature is shown to be 41 K but according to other papers is closer to 35 K. Sedna is listed with a diameter of 1,300 km (650 km radius) and a temperature of 24 K but on Wiki Sedna's diameter is listed at 995 km and its temperature is 12 K.
In either case temperature seems to be a decisive factor in retaining volatiles. Even if Sedna has a diameter of 995 km (557 km radius) it would still be able to hold onto its methane because of its cold temperature. |
These are the spectral lines of Sedna, Makemake, Pluto and Eris from the above downloadable paper written by Michael Brown the self proclaimed "Pluto Killer".
Mike Brown is a smart fella, he's currently trying to find "Planet X" but is running out of places to look. Mike's paper is worth a read. In this paper he compares various features on various KBO's. Sedna is estimated to have a radius of 500 km, however, Mike estimates Sedna's radius to be 650 km. This fact breaks the general rule of medium bodies not being able to hold on to the volatile ice methane. According to Wiki, Sedna is smaller than Charon (606 km), Charon is assumed to have lost its methane as a result of its size yet Sedna apparently contains methane. Methane's strongest deepest spectral dip is at 2.3 um |
According to Jason Cook, the crystallized structure of Charon's surface indicates it's surface ice is less than 100,000 years old because of its 35 K temperature. This observation was made pre-flyby and it was assumed cryovolcanoes were resurfacing Charon. The smooth nature of the southern hemisphere demonstrates it went through a catastrophic process of resurfacing.
The raised diagonal ridge (Serenity Chasma) along with the 6 mile lower plane to the south (Vulcan Planum (its actually a Planitia, raised planes are planum's, lower planes are planitia's, this is why Sputnik is no longer referred to as a Planum since it is actually a basin or Planitia)) separating the Northern Hemisphere from the South indicates the ridge line itself was not the only place subsurface fluid expelled onto the surface. If fluid had expelled only from this diagonal crack it would mound upwards on both edges as we see on other moons like Enceladus or Europa. |
It was hypothesized the nitrogen atmosphere of Pluto was enveloping both planets contributing to the crystallized ice and adding ammonia.
It was thought the nitrogen (N2) from Pluto's atmosphere was broken down by UV light to become two separate (N)itrogen elements which recombined with the water ice's (H2O) hydrogen on Charon to make NH3. But this doesn't add up, why would the entire sphere of water ice on Charon be crystallized while only the leading hemisphere retain the more volatile ammonia and that ammonia only appears in blotches and/or bands. |
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As they were only able to view Pluto/Charon from ground based telescopes or Hubble in 2000 this seemed like a pretty good synopsis. The problem for this hypothesis now is that we flew past Charon and can see how ammonia is splattered in blobs around Charon like someone shot paint balls at it.
Atmospherically deposited nitrogen producing ammonia would be more evenly dispersed. This leads me back to my original thought that the ammonia is being ejected off Pluto every 2.4 myr when it heats up enough for nitrogen to reach its triple point at which time nitrogen acts explosively. |
On page 81 I pointed out how ChaseAstro had identified a banding pattern on Pluto's surface suggesting the skin or crust of Pluto has slipped creating these banding stripes.
I rotated Charon's ammonia map north pole 40 degree to the right. When I enlarged the view of Charon's ammonia map, I noticed a similar pattern of faint ammonia streaks laid out in bands on Charon's surface and they appear to align roughly with the 120 degree tilt. |
I think I've been mistakenly following NASA's lead by calling these small cups on the surface of Sputnik Planitia sublimation pits but now I'm beginning to think they are more along the lines of triple point inverted half shell remnants from triple point exploding bubbles.
When dry ice (CO2) sublimates, it doesn't display inverted half domed spheres on its surfaces so why would N2 do this on Pluto? Seems more logical to think triple point conditions could blow bubbles off the surface. BUT considering the quantity of inverted bubble cups that exist on the surface, one would think the N2 would get depleted in fairly short time frames. |
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Color indices are simple measures of the differences in the apparent magnitude of an object seen through blue (B), visible (V), i.e. green-yellow, and red (R) filters. The diagram illustrates known color indices for all but the biggest objects (in slightly enhanced color). For reference, two moons: Triton and Phoebe, the centaur Pholus and the planet Mars are plotted (yellow labels, size not to scale). |
This graph is another way to understand and visualize how these colors are obtained. Telescopes observe celestial bodies through multiple filters which process particular wavelengths along the color and mostly visible spectrum referred to as U = Ultraviolet, B = Blue, V = visible or green/yellow, R = Red. In the above chart V-R represents the R-red portion of the wavelength spectrum while B-V represents the B-blue. Blue bodies are also called neutral or gray depending on how intense the waveform within each of the spectral zones. |
Brightness and color One clear notable fact derived from my below table is that neighboring Plutino's, in general, are 4.77 times darker than the average albedo of the four Pluto moons similar to the inner vs outer moons of Saturn. The four small Pluto moons are collectively very bright. Averaging all their albedos produces a single average albedo of 0.65. Plutino's, on the other hand, have average albedo's of 0.1363. Something very different has taken place in the Pluto system compared to the Plutino group. Albedos can be an age gauge of sorts. |
I know this is a fairly loose age dating method but it demonstrates basically how far apart the age of these objects could be based on brightness alone.
Kuiper Belt Objects smaller than 400 km are darker than larger objects. This suggests larger objects seem to generate some method for resurfacing or are impacted more frequently due to increased mass, in turn, exposing below surface whiter ices. |
Classical KBO that have not been resonantly disturbed by Neptune are consistently red with old dark surface albedos of 0.1342 matching regular Plutino albedos.
The Haumea collisional family of objects (note the word collisional is used to define this group) is neutral and very bright with albedos of 0.648 indicating they are young matching closely Pluto's small satellite albedos at 0.65. In this image Plutinos are red, Haumea collisional family objects are green, classical KBO are blue and objects scattered by Neptune aka scattered disk objects are gray. The two things I wanted to point out is the similar orbital distance between Plutinos and Haumeids and the close orbital inclination of the two groups. I then posit this question. Considering the proximity of Haumeids to Plutinos and the similarity of their collective albedos and colors, is it not reasonable to assume Pluto or Charon experienced a collision similar to Haumea (perhaps on Charon's north pole at Mordor) by an object nearly identical to 1994 JR1 which is perturbed every 2.4 million years to within Pluto's gravitational influence which in turn would have created Pluto's small moons and this collision took place on a similar time scale to that of Haumea's, less than a billion years ago potentially 840 myr? Is that a far fetched idea? I think not. |
Small objects are dead and can be used as a relatively stable source for roughly calculating surface age based on darkness because the primary variant of their brightness is from external radiation depending on orbital distance from the Sun and impacts which occur less often than on larger objects.
Obviously when an object becomes totally black it can't get any blacker but if a group of objects are near black similar to what we observe on most small KBO (average KBO albedo = 0.06) while a nearby group are bright white (relatively speaking) then some rough age variance is strongly inferred. All the Plutinos in my above table are smaller than 400 km except Pluto and Ixion hence they are dead and stable and steadily darkened over time by cosmic and solar radiation. They are all getting baked at roughly the same rate by radiation because of their similar orbital location and all have low albedos. Contrast that with the small dead nearby moons of Pluto which shine like bright beacons. Comet 67P has an albedo of 0.06 which is in line with other small KBO, Earth's albedo is a mere 0.37, Pluto's small moons on average are 0.65 twice that of Earth. |
Here's how this process looks with at least one other system of Transneptunian objects (TNO) called the Haumea collisional family. This family of objects has similar orbital parameters, albedos and color spectra.
This group of eleven objects make up a family of objects that have nearly identical color spectrum features displaying blue or neutral ice colors. The important columns in theses two tables are the V-R or Redness factor and the albedo. Their albedos are very bright averaging 0.65 while their redness is very low meaning their surfaces are icy not covered with tholin or regolith. Wiki quote The Haumea or Haumean family is the only identified trans-Neptunian collisional family; that is, the only group of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with similar orbital parameters and spectra (nearly pure water-ice) that suggest they originated in the disruptive impact of a progenitor body. Calculations indicate that it is probably the only trans-Neptunian collisional family. |
When New Horizons flew past Pluto they had a Student Dust Counter on board and they looked for dust particles but didn't find any.
In essence there's no evidence of a high number of local micrometeorites which could resurface Pluto's small moons even though this is how NASA suggests these moons became so bright. The only reasonable explanation for their collective bright albedos is that they were recently ejected off Pluto, Charon or both following an impact similar to the Haumea collisional family of objects.. I keep saying the small moons are bright because they are young this seems to me like a self evident and obvious concept. |
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Its frustrating to read a paper (like this one) that builds its backbone premise on a paper which I've already shown has altered, omitted and false regolith crater scaled data on Pluto's small moons page 67. ![]()
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the_compositions_of_kuiper_belt_objects_dec_2011mike_brown_1112.2764.pdf | |
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Evidence for Crystalline Water and Ammonia Ices on Pluto's Satellite Charon Jan, 2000
Michael E. Brown, Wendy M. Calvin I just realized something after reading Mike Brown's paper, some of these scientists pretty much have this shit figured out. Sure they could use a little fresh perspective but Mike Brown and other NASA scientists' like him are on top of their game. However, One thing I notice when reading old outdated papers (in science, that could be 5 years) is just how much of their speculation turns out to be wrong. They get some things spot on but completely miss the mark on others. sorta like most human beings. |
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the_surface_composition_of_large_kuiper_belt_object_2007_or10_1108.1418.pdf | |
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Ignore the crystal ball,
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look into my eyes,
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